


raven's child

by Bitterblue



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, inspired by Vax saying that Keyleth would have children in the wedding one-shot, this fic has it all! magical pregnancy and dreams that let you talk to the dead, welcome to a very specific and very sad hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 01:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20519840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitterblue/pseuds/Bitterblue
Summary: She dreams about Vax after all that, because of course she does.Keyleth-centric, set starting immediately after the de Rolo wedding in Dalen's Closet. Vax promised her she would have children, and he would look out for them, despite her protests.





	raven's child

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, thanks for joining me in this extremely sad thought train that ran away from me to the tune of almost 3k words.

She dreams about Vax after all that, because of course she does. She dreams about Vax more nights than not. Early on they were all nightmares: Vax dissolving into dust one way or another and never quite being able to reach him. Over time they shifted to bittersweet things that leave her gasping for breath from weeping, not out of adrenaline-fueled fear.

This is one of those.

_They’re still at Dalen’s Closet, the venue opulent in a way that Keyleth would never have chosen for herself but that Vex and Percy chose _for_ her - for them. Dream-Keyleth remembers protesting that they should be married in Zephrah - and they had been, two months ago. This was just an excuse to come back to someplace beautiful and throw a party, really. They have a list of places to get married in, places of poignance. They’re going to get to all of them eventually. _

_The ceremony is beautiful, lit by late afternoon sun and the private, warm smile Vax gives her as he places another ring on another of her fingers. (Pike, before the event, when told they would just keep adding rings until they ran out of places or fingers, had nodded sagely, “That’s smart. Like brass knuckles if you need to punch someone, but pretty.”) The party after is raucous, as their friends are wont to do. Later, after they’ve danced as much as they can possibly dance and drank a little more than that, they go to their private suite. Awake-Keyleth doesn’t mind these sorts of dreams so much, now. Dream-Vax kisses her and kisses her, like he doesn’t have a moment to spare for breath. Some part of her reasons that he doesn’t._

She wakes up as usual, which is to say she wakes up crying. 

Sunlight filters through gauzy curtains, framing a familiar-looking raven perched on the windowsill, which takes off into flight with a raspy caw when it sees she’s awake. _How am I supposed to get over you when you keep sending me ravens? _She swallows down a fresh sob and wave of tears, hiccuping a little, and goes to find the bath. 

* * *

She dreams about Vax because she doesn’t dream about much else, not for a year and change now. After Vex and Percy’s wedding the tenor of them shifts again, slightly softer than before. She has spent more of her waking hours than she would care to admit ruminating over his words - his _voice_, dry and raspy like a dead thing, but still fundamentally Vax - and his quiet assumption she would somehow move past him, which must work its way into her subconscious and flavours her dreams. In her dreams, there is no moving on from Vax because there is no need: he is alive and well and sometimes he has new scars and others neither of them has any, but he is always there with her. He said so. Her dreams make it true.

A month after Vex and Percy’s wedding and what, Keyleth presumes, is the last time she will ever see Vax alive again, she druidcrafts herself a ring of rosewood. It’s not fancy, there are no crests or symbolic stones or engravings. It isn’t even from him. But she wears it, and she knows what it means, and it’s the closest she’s ever going to get, so.

_The first night after she decides to make herself the ring she never received, she dreams of him as usual, and his expression is soft. _

_“I really mucked it up, huh?” He kisses her sweetly. “Should’ve done this ages ago, but there was always something happening that made it seem less urgent than it should have. It should’ve been more urgent.” He laughs, kissing her again. “Vex was always the smart one when it came to timelines. And to everything.”_

She wakes alone, the first littlest bit of sunlight coming in through the window. It catches her ring, bringing out deep, shifting hues of the brown. For a moment, it feels like he’s merely stepped out for some necessary, urgent business, and Keyleth stretches as she waits for him to return. Slowly, she remembers he will not. It takes a little longer for her to get out of bed, pulling the covers up to hide the tearstains on her pillow.

(The first time Vex sees her wearing it, her face goes through the full gamut of happy-sad-confused-worried-sad-sad-sad, tears catching at the corners of her eyes before she blinks them rapidly away. She reaches out and takes both of Keyleth’s hands, pulling her into a tight hug. They both pretend nothing has changed, after that.)

* * *

She dreams about Vax because it is a welcome break from guiding Zephrah. She feels set-apart from her people, not unkindly. They resepect her and want her to lead them wisely and she can do that, but it loses the shine a little if they know how nervous she is about it, so she does her best not to let them see. Dream Keyleth doesn’t feel set-apart, not from Dream-Vax or Dream-Zephrah. 

_They’re standing together in the house they have built with the community, each person contributing their own druidcraft to shaping its woodwork and growth. Vax had spent months working at the decorative pattern on the windowsills, a feather motif that by all rights should look a little overwrought, mitigated by his obvious pride in the work. Dream-Keyleth looks out the window now, to the handful of birds perched like shadows in the trees._

_“We should tell them they’ll be big brothers soon,” suggests Vax, from behind her. She turns, laughing and shaking her head._

_“They’re birds.” They are not strictly birds, not even in a dream._

_He shrugs eloquently. “Alright. We don’t tell the birds. But we should tell my sister before she works it out herself.” He pauses. “And your dad. We should definitely tell your dad.”_

_Dream-Keyleth nods slowly, considering. “Vex, first.” She rests a hand across her belly, still flat for now, and smiles. Behind her, in the trees, all of the ravens launch themselves into the air with a great clamouring cry._

She wakes with a hand curled in the same position, her ring dark against her tanned skin, and cries and cries and cries until she cannot distinguish her own crying from that of the birds just outside.

“It’s not real,” Awake-Keyleth tells herself later. “It isn’t real. It is okay to miss him - it’s _understandable _to miss him - and it’s okay to never get over him entirely, but it’s not real.” 

She resolves to go to Whitestone for a visit. They can all be real together there, and maybe she will feel less haunted by her dream of Zephrah-with-Vax with one of the twins down the hall.

* * *

She dreams about Vax, even in Whitestone. It isn’t really a surprise - she’s dreamt of him here, too, every time she’s been since he’s been gone. Maybe it’s the Sun Tree, roots stretching wide beneath the town and gifting her a sense of something adjacent to peace as she steps through it into the brisk mid-autumn air. Maybe it’s the knowledge that her friends are just down the hall, and Vesper between them, sleeping peacefully. Maybe it’s simply a different bed, one of the first she ever shared with him, but maintained by staff who have washed the sheets many times in the more than a year he’s been gone so there’s no pretending she can still smell him there. Whatever it is, Keyleth falls asleep melancholy and drifts into dreams almost immediately.

_They’re standing together in the nursery in Whitestone, Vax holding Vesper with a practiced air. Dream-Keyleth wonders at how natural he is with small children, watching him hold his niece even as she laughs and lunges for the beads tied back in his hair. He laughs too, leaning his had back from her small, pudgy fingers, and winks at Keyleth as he successfully maneuvers around Vesper’s grasp._

_“She takes after Vex - she always loved shiny things, even when we were small.” He blows a raspberry on Vesper’s cheek, eliciting a squeal. “Better luck for this one she comes from money now.” She squirms, and he sets her down on the soft blanket, where she picks up a stuffed bear, gnawing at its head._

_“I wonder who they’ll be. Who they’ll take after.” Vax gathers Dream-Keyleth up in his arms, her head resting easily on his shoulder, in the crook of his neck. “Maybe a little of us both, Kiki. If they’re lucky.”_

She wakes to the sound of Vesper crying, two doors down. Without thought, Keyleth shrugs into a robe and slips down the hall in the pre-dawn, into her niece’s room. Vesper is kicking and wriggling in the crib, her face red with indignation, fists balled up.

“Oh...did you need a new diaper? Okay, alright, we’ll fix this. I promise we’ll fix it.” Keyleth scoops her up, bringing her to the changing table, and sets her niece to rights. Crisis averted, Vesper reaches up to be picked up. A small, black feather falls from her fist as her hand opens, fluttering beside her on the table, unnoticed by the baby who is very interested in all of Keyleth’s tattoos, some of which are visible beyond the edges of the robe. She lifts Vesper again, ignoring the feather, and settles with her in the rocking chair.

“Darling,” says Vex from the doorway, her face soft and sleepy. “We didn’t invite you here to make you do free childcare. You don’t have to - you can go back to bed if you want. I’ll take her.” Her expression is unreadable, which is mostly just the lighting. Probably. 

“I don’t mind,” she says, and it’s even mostly the truth. She finds that her hand is on her belly again, no longer quite so flat. “It’s good practice, I guess. It’s good _to_ practice.”

Vex’s unreadable expression resolves to something like concern. “Keyleth…”

“Yeah, I don’t, uh...I don’t know exactly how this works? Or should work? Or is working? But I kind of think I need to practice and that’s nuts, right? That’s not, like, a normal thing to do when you...when your partner…” Vesper is fast asleep, lulled by the rocking chair, her drool beginning to dampen the edges of Keyleth’s robe. “I dream about him all the time.”

The baby is lifted from her arms, gently, and settled back in bed. Vex lifts Keyleth, next, helping her to her feet. They walk toward the kitchens, still quiet and dark, and Vex makes them both mugs of peppermint tea.

“So it isn’t…” she grimaces, clearly unprepared to have this conversation at all, let alone now. “There hasn’t been anyone…”

Keyleth shakes her head vehemently. “Only _ever_ Vax. So. Uh. It’s kind of...like, you know, a biological impossibility. Except I don’t even know if I can trust that when the gods can bring people back from the dead on command. I’ve seen things that shouldn’t be possible. What’s one or two more?”

Vex’s mouth twists into a wary sort of frown, and she swallows her mouthful of tea slowly. “He did say you’d have children. At the ceremony. But surely that’s not a thing gods can just,” she shrugs, “bestow - to say nothing of my brother emphatically not being a god.” Her tone makes Keyleth laugh, which makes Vex laugh, and then they’re both laughing together and maybe crying a little, but who could even say?

* * *

She dreams about Vax after a few months without any dreams she can recall at all, when it’s too far gone to deny what her body is doing despite all the logistical problems involved. The people of Zephrah have asked no questions and offered her only their unwavering support. Voice of the Tempest isn’t a strictly hereditary position, but her children might become good candidates, under her influence. The Ashari community is small enough that new members are always welcome.

_She is in Dream-Zephrah again, in the house they built together in other dreams, unambiguously pregnant and starting to be genuinely uncomfortable from it. She’s doing something important - there are papers and writing tools scattered over the table - but she looks up when the door opens. Her heart warms, seeing him step inside. She’s on her feet before she knows it, coming to gather him into her arms._

_“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” he says when she finally stops kissing him. “Work stuff, you know. The usual.” _

_“I know. You haven’t missed much - just regular Zephrah.”_

_He places his hands on her stomach, the gesture intimate, protective. “I hate to have missed this, though. It can’t be helped, but I’d have preferred to be here.”_

She wakes with a twinge of pain, just where his hands had been in the dream. It fades, then returns again. She sighs, sitting up with some effort. A trio of ravens scatter from the window as she surges to her feet. She decides that they are the cause of the pair of black feathers tangled in her sheets. If she believes it enough, it might become true.

* * *

She dreams about Vax the night before the rest of it happens, Vex and Pike in Zephrah to help on demand. They’d arrived a few days previous, since it could be any time, but even as she’s nodding along to their sensible plan, Keyleth knows that she’ll dream about him before it’s really happening. So she does.

_He looks absolutely thrilled and the saddest she’s ever seen him, all at once, a curious combination of warring emotions flickering across his familiar face. His voice never sounds like the dry thing it was at Dalen’s Closet, not in her dreams._

_“Almost time, you think?”_

_She smiles, scrunching her nose up a little. “You tell me. You’re the one with your hands on the strings of Fate in the weave, pulling them to make things happen. I’m sure you’ve got your hands on those, too.” For a moment they simply blink at each other in surprise - she hadn’t thought that, not so clearly, and he clearly wasn’t expecting it. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, but it seems like...well! How am I meant to move on when you’ve upgraded from sending me ravens to children, Vax?”_

_He at least has the good grace to look sheepish. “We should have...that chance was taken from us, and not by us. The threads unknotted. Why not just...retie them in, where they ought to have been? Let at least one of us have that.”_

_She sits, the dreamspace resolving into their dream home in Zephrah so that she is at the kitchen table. He sits, too, leaning in close and taking her hands._

_“I don’t want to do this without you.”_

_“I know.”_

_“She’s going to be...very angry with you.”_

_“I assume My Lady already knows.” A ghost of a smile graces his face. “She is a god, after all. Surely she’d know if I was touching threads of Fate I shouldn’t.”_

_She lets him hold her hands for what feels like an eternity, full of a storm surge of emotions, trying to sort them into their constituent parts. Finally, she fixes him with a look. “Don’t do this to me again, Vax. It’s not fair to me to try to give me parts of you when I can’t actually have you, still. Do you understand? Promise me.”_

_His expression darkens, turning melancholy. “It’s taking a lot out of me to come this way at all. I promise.”_

_She laughs, incredulous. “What, so I won’t even see you? After?”_

She wakes alone for the last time. Soon after, everything else is happening. It isn’t long, according to the midwife, and Keyleth does presume she would know what she’s talking about, but it’s after sunset when things are finally accelerating, when seems like a long time to _her_. Pike and Vex are there, offering encouragement and hands to squeeze. (Vex, tearily, offers her hand to squeeze, “Since my deadbeat brother isn’t here to do his job properly,” and Keyleth takes it gratefully, trying not to use her full strength as she does.)

After the pushing starts, it isn’t long before she is holding two small babies, each wrapped in soft blankets. They have tiny, matching tufts of black hair and all of their mother’s righteous indignation about the experience of birth. She is exhausted and in love and begins to cry, tears spilling down her cheeks.

Three days after, with no dreams haunting her in the bursts of sleep she manages as one or the other needs attention - an overwhelming task, even with her friends here to help (and all of their healing magics poured into her) - Keyleth writes a pair of names into the record book of Ashari births.

_Vilya Elaine_

_Vax’ildan Corren_

If the record is the tiniest bit tear smudged, well, it isn’t unsual and no one comments. The Voice of the Tempest is allowed to be a storm, sometimes, herself. 

* * *

When she is finally alone with the twins, a month after their birth - it had taken weeks to convince Vex and Pike she could handle it herself, though she had been grateful for the help - she is tired enough that if she dreams she does not remember them upon waking. What she does know is this: in the mornings, the twins cry, and it sounds like the flock of ravens in the tree outside, and she doesn’t even mind.


End file.
